No, Democrats — Keeping Your Own Money Isn't 'Theft'

Half a lifetime ago, it was an easy sell: Tax cuts were the mechanism to put more of your money back into your pocket. Buoyed by leadership from a Republican in the White House, congressional Democrats fell in line and enacted tax cuts that supercharged the American economy to the tune of more than a million jobs in just one month.

Despite that documented success in the 1980s, as well as the proof of presidential leadership on the issue before and since, this most recent reform only passed because Republicans stuck together and took advantage of reconciliation rules in the Senate to thwart minority Democrats from bottling it up.

So what brought on the change? It’s not like Democrats and their media allies haven’t repeated the same “tax cuts for the wealthy” mantra and rhetoric for each and every GOP-sponsored tax package over the last 35 years. Indeed, the Big Lie becomes believable if repeated often enough, which is why House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi compared the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to “Armageddon.” Similarly, thanks to the fake news about Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, his approval ratings have tanked, and Millennials now believe we should be more of a socialist nation.

Shamefully lost because of this need for re-education is a basic concept that our nation was founded upon: the idea that what you earn through your labor should be yours to keep. We in our humble shop certainly understand our responsibility to “render unto Caesar,” as well as our duty to help out the least among us. But at the same time, we honor the idea that there should be limits placed on what government does for us, lest we succumb to slavery of a different sort.

That concept, however, is lost on Democrats, who realize that the power to levy taxes is also the power to destroy. Thus, they’ve succeeded in destroying our concept of private property by characterizing our desire to keep a little bit more of what we’ve earned as outright theft from society.

We were warned on this point long ago by John Adams, who said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

Democrats have molded their party’s entire philosophy around coveting and stealing.

Bringing Adams’ thought forward 230 years is David French of National Review, who wrote a scathing reminder to the “snowflakes” out there that, in truth, it’s taxation that’s theft — not the just-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “We’re back to culture war,” writes French. “Red and Blue America are once again like ships passing in the night. A conservative hears the language of ‘theft’ and laughs. I’m not stealing from anyone if I’m allowed to keep more of my own cash. The progressive hears the same word and nods. After all, the government must fund ‘our’ welfare state, and the more money a person has, the greater the government’s moral and legal claim on his resources.”

Democrats are busy promoting a narrative based on a belief that Republican tax reform is “theft.” Bernie Sanders called it “looting of the federal treasury,” Elizabeth Warren characterized it as “a heist,” Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of making it a priority “to give the riches few a bigger piece of the pie,” and Nancy Pelosi says tax cuts for everyone are an effort to “rob from [children’s] future and ransack the middle class to reward the rich.” They are more than prepared to make this so-called theft an issue for the 2018 midterms.

With Democrats gearing up for class warfare, the next election will serve as a referendum on the direction of our country, and on the belief that we work for ourselves rather than a government that decides how much of what we earn we can keep. We know that Democrats support the latter approach, and they’ve succeeded quite well in creating a narrative based on it. The GOP has no choice but to bet that the tax cuts boost economic growth and prosperity to the point that they overwhelm the Democrats’ efforts to instill in us a collective guilt for keeping more of what we earn.

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